Strawberries Sweet in All Seasons

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE! 

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Strawberries Sweet in All Seasons

Jim Murray, my writing hero, once told me he regretted his modesty in not doing a column about his memoir when it came out. This lesson, combined with numerous readers of this space asking me about the meaning behind the title of my new book of essays, “Strawberries in Wintertime,” leads me to shamelessly share the backstory.

In my boyhood, I fondly remember picking wild blackberries and raspberries on humid summer days at a weekend cabin in rural Ohio. My two older brothers, younger sister, and I filled pail after pail with ripe berries – and nearly as many berries went directly into our mouths as into the buckets.1berriesstand

So plentiful were the blackberries, especially, that my dad made wine with them. Once. Not only did the blackberry vino prove undrinkable, Mom’s pots and pans were stained purple beyond ruin in the process.

Still, wild blackberries and raspberries, and store-bought strawberries, in summertime were always a delicious treat. Too, an expected one.

Berries in the wintertime, in the Midwest, however, are something I cannot recall from my youth. I am sure they were available at the supermarket in the 1960s for a premium, but Mom never brought them home.

So it was a magical winter indeed when my family took a Christmas vacation to Ventura in 1971 and spent a week at the charming Solimar beach house of family friends. I had never before seen the ocean in person, much less bodysurfed and built sandcastles or explored tidal pools at low tide and chased a “grunion run” under a full moon’s high tide.

And here is something else magical: fresh strawberries in wintertime!1berriesflat

Instead of by the bucketful as with Ohio blackberries, we enjoyed Southern California strawberries by the “flat” topless box containing a dozen plastic pint baskets with a bonus pint piled atop.

I am guessing, but I imagine the price for the entire overflowing flat from a roadside farmer’s stand in Saticoy – for Ventura County was then, as it remains today, the nation’s leading producer of strawberries – wasn’t much more than the cost of a single pint basket in a Midwest grocery store in December.

The temptation during the drive from the farmer’s stand back to the beach house was too tempting to resist. In the car, en route, I ate crabapple-sized strawberries by the handful, by the mouthful, sweet red nectar dripping down my chin.

The following summer we moved from Columbus to Ventura and strawberries became a year-round fare. Still, in my mind they have remained a special treat in wintertime. Hence the title of my newest book, as I hope each offering will make the reader smile and want to devour another.

Indeed, over the years “Strawberries in Wintertime” to me has become a metaphor for an unexpected pleasure in any season. For example, meeting my wife at a college Christmas party was certainly a strawberry-in-wintertime event – and so was having John Wooden befriend me a few years later in springtime.

A surprise birthday party, even in summer, is a strawberry in wintertime – and so is a planned trip in autumn that proves to be magical at every turn.

The point, I suppose, is that by paying attention and having the right frame of mind, our own strawberries in wintertime can fill a “flat” to overflowing no matter what page the calendar shows.

Watching an elementary school play or a Broadway show, cheering at a youth track meet or an Olympic race, building a sandcastle or visiting a castle in Ireland, can all be strawberries in wintertime.

Bumping into an old classmate or finding an email in your inbox from a friend you haven’t heard from in years, these too are strawberries in wintertime.

When I think back to my first visit to Ventura, or in fact any time I stroll on the beach or dive into the surf, I am reminded of this advice from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”

In my mind, he should have added: “And eat strawberries in wintertime.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”